Signal Boost: Death Threats and Hate Crimes, Attacks on Women Bloggers Escalating
Read the full article at http://ittybiz.com/death-threats-online/ - if you get a 503 error, try reloading, because this one is getting a lot of different boosts here and there.

My position on the whole mess is simple: I don't know what the original argument is, was, or might have been about, and quite frankly, I don't give a damn, either. Death threats are bullying, pure and simple. Stalking is bullying. Threatening someone else with death, or grievous bodily harm, or mob action is bullying. And any form of bullying is abhorrent to me, as a bullying survivor.

I am not a "free speech" campaigner. I believe in the idea of responsible speech - that we are all responsible for our words, for the ideas we espouse, for the things we say. I believe words have power, and we are responsible for the words we choose to express our thoughts. We cannot say that "words will never hurt you" and expect laws to have meaning. We cannot use "but I didn't mean it" as an excuse and expect our religious texts to retain their power to convince. We cannot excuse hatred with "it was just a joke".

Words have power. Words that express the spirit of mean-mindedness, words that threaten, words that are meant to be harmful, words that are meant to break someone's spirit, to pain them, to hurt them; those words have just as much power as words which are meant to help, to build up, to elevate, to make things better. I don't feel the first type of words have a legitimate place in any discussion, and quite honestly, I don't care how damn politically or socially incorrect that makes me.